1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for cutting a lying bar-shaped food and the same apparatus, in more detail, relating to such method and apparatus that a predetermined portion of a bar-shaped food lying on a carriage conveyor can be cut with that lying position intact.
2. Prior Art
To date, the present applicant has developed such method and apparatus for continuously producing in automation a cored lump food whose inner food material of a certain kind is coated with an outer skin material of a different kind such as a pounded rice cake or bun with sweet bean paste stuffed therein and cheeseburger, and filed a patent application such as Japanese "Kokai" or Laid-open Patent Application No. 6-217675 therefor. The arrangement of such prior art is that to produce a cored lump food, a multilayered bar-shaped food which is extruded with more than two kinds of food materials concentrically overlaid on one another is introduced into a cutting area of a shutter mechanism enclosed with a plurality of cutter pieces which open and close around said area and a certain portion of the food is circumferentially squeezed and cut by simultaneously operating the respective cutter pieces so as to close said cutting area. This has greatly improved the efficiency of producing a cored lump food.
However, with such prior method and apparatus as mentioned above, it has been found inconvenient in use when a soft food material is processed because a bar-shaped food extruded from a nozzle is vertically extruded downwards and is performed cutting operation by the shutter mechanism disposed below the nozzle so that the food is elongated or torn off during the extrusion due to its self-weight, with the result that a normal cutting operation can not be performed.